


the color of good judgement

by masongrey



Series: pearlet one-shots [1]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: M/M, Sad, Short, angsty, sort of like these tags lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 08:31:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4472468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masongrey/pseuds/masongrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>jason buys purple food dye every other week. matt wants to find out why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the color of good judgement

**Author's Note:**

> so i posted this anonymously on artificial queens but i'm posting it here too (bwahaha) so i can get more feedback and so that it can stay with all my other fics in one place. i'm sort of a whore for constructive criticism. lay it on me darlings <3
> 
> quick note, i use traditional genderqueer pronouns "they/them" for violet in this even though she has no preferences in the real world. 100% fiction, 100% please don't sue me.

Jason Dardo is used to disappointment.

Could’ve-would’ve-should’ve-beens made up their whole life. It wouldn’t be fair for it to stop now.

 

They’ve been living on the edge of regret, sitting in a tide pool of their own tears, since the day they first looked in the mirror and didn’t know what the fuck it was that they saw staring back at them. But worse still, is that they didn’t know what the fuck it was that they wanted to see staring back at them.

They aren’t ever sure what to tell the people with the wide eyes and the hushed whispers. Binary gender never really made much sense to Jason. After all, nothing is really as black and white as it seems.

“But it’s the way the world works, Jason!” Their mother would scream.

She never understood what she had done wrong with them. She prayed for them a lot, but they never got better. Her consciousness got better maybe, but they still can’t sleep at night.

“What have you done to us?”

They haven’t heard from their mother since the morning of their eighteen birthday when she handed them a bus ticket to New York and five hundred dollars with a sad smile.

It’s funny how easily someone who isn’t quite a she, but isn’t quite a he either, can fail to exist all of a sudden. It’s funny how these are the people that are the easiest to forget.

Now Jason is twenty, cold and hard and a million seconds past warmth. Now they are alone and small with darkness gathering under their eyes and an icy pulse beating through their veins. Now they are here, standing in aisle three at a convenience store on the corner of 12th and Robinson that they never bothered to learn the name of.

They grab what they came for with a sigh, the prices have been rising awfully high lately. They are not rich. They make money off and on, working odd jobs here and there. Nothing is sure, nothing is steady. But they’ll be damned if they don’t have this. It’s food coloring, a tiny bottle.

They don’t eat much, but everything they eat is the color of grapes, the color of good judgment, the color of deep anguish, the color of violets and gods and goddesses and Dionysus and a genderqueer named Jason Dardo. The color purple. Lavender, really. They’ve always had a certain fondness for pastels. And hidden meanings. And irony.

Violet is Jason’s unofficial theme song.

They trudge to the front of the store, eyes downcast. Most days they wear their shame just underneath their thick coat of anger. Today, they decide, as they sigh for the hundredth time, that the fight to keep it buried is just not worth it. They slip a five dollar bill onto the counter wordlessly.

The money sits on the counter for one minute, two. They look up. They stare into a red and white name-tag sticker. Hello My Name Is: Useless reads it’s messy scrawl.

The boy that the name-tag is attached to smirks. He’s beautiful, in a lazy, effortlesly thrown together sort of way.

“Purple, huh?”

His voice is somehow maple syrup drizzled over pancakes and a shirt being drawn through a washboard all at once. Jason shivers.

Useless waits. His golden septum piercing glints and sparkles.

Jason nods, tucking their hair behind their ear. Useless smiles, a slow smile that reminds Jason of a long stem of ivy winding up a chimney.

They can’t remember the last time someone smiled at them like this. They want to smile too, but instead they bite their lip until they taste the coppery tang of blood.

Useless grabs the money, jams it in the register. Jason grabs the dye and leaves before Useless can even begin counting out the change.

They spend the whole trip to their dodgy apartment kicking themself for not smiling back.

Could’ve. Would’ve. Should’ve.

\- - -

Two weeks later Jason finds themself in aisle three again.

Useless is working the counter. Today his name-tag reads Hello My Name Is: Stupid.

Jason stares at it for a beat too long.

“I hate being labeled by others so I do it myself. I’m also pretty stupid,” Stupid offers with a shrug, the corner of his lip quirking up.

Jason nods quickly in agreement, staring down at the five dollar bill on the counter. Stupid tips his head back and laughs.

Jason smiles, a quick flash of a thing. And then they are running out the door clutching the purple dye in their fist.

Stupid can’t help but watch him go.

\- - -

Hello My Name Is: Whore.

“I’m going on break. Wanna join?” Whore grins.

Jason sort of smiles. Jason looks around. They are the only customer left in the store.

Whore smiles again, grabbing a box of cigarettes from his back pocket.

Jason sits on an upturned storage crate in the alley behind the convenience store and watches as Whore takes deep, raspy draws from his cigarette.

“My dream is to be an artist,” Whore looks wistfully up at the sky. “I used to paint.“

“Now you work here?” It’s the first thing Jason has said and Whore seems surprised that they can speak at all. He cocks his head, a glint in his eye.

“S'not so bad,” he smiles.

Jason nods their head.

The sun falls halfway down in the sky before Jason trips his way home, bottle of purple dye clutched so tightly in their fist that it’s beginning to stain their fingers.

Whore almost kissed them.

They almost let him.

\- - -

Today the name-tag reads Hello My Name Is: with nothing after it.

Jason gulps. They understand that. They understand feeling like nothing.

“Violet,” Nothing smiles at Jason.

“Nothing,” Violet smiles a tiny smile of their own.

“Matt,” Nothing grabs the five dollar bill, hands the change over with another sleepy smile

“Jason,” Violet feels a shiver up their spine when Nothing’s fingers graze theirs for full seconds longer than is absolutely necessary.

“Jason,” Matt winks. “I like it.”

“Matt,” Jason whispers. “It suits you.”

“One of these days,” Matt draws a hand through his carelessly styled hair, “you’ll tell me what you need all this purple dye for.”

“One day,” Jason flutters their eyelashes. “Maybe.”

\- - -

Hello My Name Is: Unforgivable.

There isn’t much talking this time.

Jason is drunk, spinning and dizzy. They pays for their dye with a hiccupy invitation and a row of sloppy, drunken kisses that wriggle their way under Matt’s skin with no intention of leaving anytime soon.

Jason is afraid that Matt will be gone in the morning.

Matt is afraid that Jason will look at him with regret once the sun peaks and the shadows and blurred edges of ‘last night’ fade away.

They’re both pleasantly surprised.

\- - -

Hello My Name Is: Happy.

Jason beams, Matt beams back.

Jason buys a bottle of purple dye and a bouquet of flowers.

Matt takes the flowers and presses a kiss into the back of Jason’s palm.

Jason wants to run outside and pour their new dye out in the street, so that they can have an excuse to come back for more.

Matt smiles like he knows.

Jason thinks that, maybe, this is what love is like.

\- - -

Jason skips to the convenience store.

Today the name-tag at the counter reads Hello My Name Is: Brenda.

Brenda is large, bursting out of her apron. She huffs and puffs when they freeze, looking around for Matt.

Where is he? They want to ask. The artist boy with the messy hair and the nose ring who just wanted to paint? The one who was useless and stupid and a whore and nothing and unforgivable and happy and Matt? They want to ask Brenda so many questions.

Where does he live? What is his phone number? What is his favorite book? Have you read it? Is it any good? Is he always half asleep because his dreams are so damn beautiful or because his life is so damn hard?

Can you tell him that Jason Dardo loves him?

Can you tell him that Violet says hello?

Yes, there are so many things they want to say.

They don’t.

They turn for the door, leaving their purple dye sitting on the counter.

They don’t come back.

They never drip dye into their food again.

Their food is not the food of gods and goddesses and good judgment. Their food is the food of crumpled things and broken promises and should’ve-would’ve-could’ve-beens.


End file.
